Francois Henri “Jack” LaLanne was an Americanfitness, exercise, and nutritional expert and motivational speaker who is sometimes called “the godfather of fitness” and the “first fitness superhero died from pneumonia he was , 96 ..”[1] He described himself as being a “sugarholic” and a “junk food junkie” until he was 15. He also had behavioral problems, but “turned his life around” after listening to a public lecture by Paul Bragg, a well-known nutrition speaker.[2] During his career, he came to believe that the country’s overall health depended on the health of its population, writing that “physical culture and nutrition — is the salvation of America.”[3]
Decades before fitness began being promoted by celebrities like Jane Fonda and Richard Simmons, LaLanne was already widely recognized for publicly preaching the health benefits of regular exercise and a good diet. He published numerous books on fitness and hosted a fitness television show between 1951 and 1985. As early as 1936, at age 21, he opened one of the nation’s first[3] fitness gyms in Oakland, California, which became a prototype for dozens of similar gyms using his name.[4] One of his 1950s television exercise programs was aimed toward women, whom he also encouraged to join his health clubs.[3][5] He invented a number of exercise machines, including leg-extension and pulley devices. Besides producing his own series of videos, he coached the elderly and disabled to not forgo exercise, believing it would enable them to enhance their strength.[3][5]LaLanne also gained recognition for his success as a bodybuilder, as well as for his prodigious feats of strength. Arnold Schwarzenegger once stated, “That Jack LaLanne’s an animal!,” after LaLanne, at 54, beat a 21-year-old Schwarzenegger “badly” in an informal contest.[1] He credited LaLanne for being “an apostle for fitness” by inspiring “billions all over the world to live healthier lives,”[6] and had earlier placed him on his Governor’s Council on Physical Fitness.

Early life

LaLanne was born in San Francisco, California,[3] to Jennie (née Garaig) (1884-1973) and Jean/John LaLanne (1881-1939). His parents were immigrants from Oloron-Sainte-Marie in southwest France. LaLanne had two older brothers, Ervil, who died in childhood (1906-1911), and Norman (1908–2005), who nicknamed him “Jack.”[3][7]
He grew up in Bakersfield, California and later moved to Berkeley when he was still a child. His father died at the age of 58 of a heart attack, caused in part by poor nutrition.[8] LaLanne wrote that as a boy he was addicted to sugar and junk food. He had violent episodes directed against himself and others, describing himself as “a miserable goddamn kid…it was like hell.”[9] Besides having a bad temper, he also suffered from headaches and bulimia, and temporarily dropped out of high school at age 14. The following year, at age 15, he heard health food pioneer Paul Bragg give a talk on health and nutrition, focusing on the “evils of meat and sugar.”[8]
Bragg’s message had a powerful influence on LaLanne, who then changed his life and started focusing on his diet and exercise.[10] In his own words, he was “born again,” and besides his new focus on nutrition, he began working out daily. He went back to school, where he made the high school football team, and later went on to college in San Francisco where he earned a Doctor of Chiropractic degree. He studied Henry Gray’s Anatomy of the Human Body and concentrated on bodybuilding and weightlifting.[8]

Fitness career

Health clubs

In 1936, he opened what is considered the nation’s first health and fitness club in Oakland, California,[8] where he offered supervised weight and exercise training and gave nutritional advice. His primary goal was to encourage and motivate his clients to improve their overall health. Doctors, however, advised their patients to stay away from his health club, a business totally unheard of at the time, and warned their patients that “LaLanne was an exercise ‘nut,’ whose programs would make them muscle-bound” and cause severe medical problems.[8] LaLanne recalls the initial reaction of doctors to his promotion of weight-lifting:

LaLanne designed the first leg extension machines, pulley machines using cables, and the weight selectors that are now standard in the fitness industry. He invented the original model of what became the Smith machine.[11] LaLanne encouraged women to lift weights (though at the time it was thought this would make women look masculine and unattractive). By the 1980s, Jack LaLanne’s European Health Spas numbered more than 200. He eventually licensed all his health clubs to the Bally company, now known as Bally Total Fitness. Though not associated with any gym, LaLanne continued to lift weights until his death.
LaLanne’s gym ownership led to a brief professional wrestling career in 1938. Wrestlers were among the few athletes who embraced weight training, and they frequented his health club. LaLanne wrestled in the Bay Area for only a few months. He was well-respected enough that he was booked to wrestle to a draw against some big name opponents rather than lose, despite his lack of experience. LaLanne was friendly with such performers as Lou Thesz and Strangler Lewis.

Books, television and other media

LaLanne presented fitness and exercise advice on television for 34 years. The Jack LaLanne Show was the longest running television exercise program. It began in 1951 as a local program on San Francisco‘s ABC television station, KGO-TV, with LaLanne paying for the airtime himself as a way to promote his gym and related health products. LaLanne also met his wife Elaine while she was working for the local station. In 1959, the ABC network picked up the show for nationwide broadcast, which continued until 1985.
The show was noted for its minimalist set, where LaLanne inspired his viewers to use basic home objects, such as a chair, to perform their exercises along with him. Wearing his standard jumpsuit, he urged his audience “with the enthusiasm of an evangelist,” to get off their couch and copy his basic movements, a manner considered the forerunner of today’s fitness videos.[8][12]:watch In 1959, LaLanne recorded Glamour Stretcher Time, a workout album which provided phonograph-based instruction for exercising with an elastic cord called the Glamour Stretcher.[13] As a daytime show, much of LaLanne’s audience were stay-at-home mothers. Wife Elaine LaLanne was part of the show to demonstrate the exercises, as well as the fact that doing them would not ruin their figures or musculature. LaLanne also included his dog Happy as a way to attract children to the show. Later in the run, another dog named Walter was used, with LaLanne claiming “Walter” stood for “We All Love To Exercise Regularly.”
LaLanne published several books and videos on fitness and nutrition, appeared in movies, and recorded a song with Connie Haines. He marketed exercise equipment, a range of vitamin supplements, and two models of electric juicers.[14] These include the “Juice Tiger”, as seen on Amazing Discoveries with Mike Levey, and “Jack LaLanne’s Power Juicer”.[15] It was on the show that LaLanne introduced the phrase “That’s the power of the juice!” However, In March 1996, 70,000 Juice Tiger juicers, 9% of its models, were recalled after 14 injury incidents were reported.[15] The Power Juicer is still sold in five models.[16]
LaLanne celebrated his 95th birthday with the release of a new book titled, Live Young Forever.[17] In the book, he discussed how he kept healthy and active well into his advanced age.

Personal health routine

Diet

LaLanne blamed overly processed foods for many health problems. He advocated a mostly meatless diet but which included fish (see Pescetarianism)[18][19], and took vitamin supplements.[20][21][22]
He ate two meals a day and avoided snacks. His breakfast, after working out for two hours, consisted of hard-boiled egg whites, a cup of broth, oatmeal with soy milk and seasonal fruit. For dinner he and his wife typically ate raw vegetables and egg whites along with fish. He did not drink coffee.[5]
LaLanne said his two simple rules of nutrition are: “if man made it, don’t eat it”, and “if it tastes good, spit it out.”[23] He offered his opinion of the average person’s diet:

“Look at the average American diet: ice cream, butter, cheese, whole milk, all this fat. People don’t realize how much of this stuff you get by the end of the day. High blood pressure is from all this high-fat eating. Do you know how many calories are in butter and cheese and ice cream? Would you get your dog up in the morning for a cup of coffee and a donut? Probably millions of Americans got up this morning with a cup of coffee, a cigarette and a donut. No wonder they are sick and fouled up.”[1]

Exercise

When exercising, he worked out repetitively with weights until he experienced “muscle fatigue” in whatever muscle groups he was exercising, or when it became impossible for him to go on with a particular routine. “Training to failure” is now commonplace. LaLanne moved from exercise to exercise without stopping. To contradict critics who thought this would leave him tightly musclebound and uncoordinated, LaLanne liked to demonstrate one-handed balancing. His home contained two gyms and a pool which he used daily.[5] He also dismissed warmups, calling them “shtick” and “something else to sell”: “15 minutes to warm up? Does a lion warm up when he’s hungry? ‘Uh oh, here comes an antelope. Better warm up.’ No! He just goes out there and eats the sucker.”
He continued with his two-hour workouts into his 90s, which also included walking.[24]
He often said, “I can’t die, it would ruin my image.”[5] When asked about sex, LaLanne had a standard joke, saying that despite their advanced age, he and his wife still made love almost every night: “Almost on Monday, almost on Tuesday, almost on Wednesday…” He explained his reasons for exercising:

“I train like I’m training for the Olympics or for a Mr. America contest, the way I’ve always trained my whole life. You see, life is a battlefield. Life is survival of the fittest. How many healthy people do you know? How many happy people do you know? Think about it. People work at dying, they don’t work at living. My workout is my obligation to life. It’s my tranquilizer. It’s part of the way I tell the truth — and telling the truth is what’s kept me going all these years.”[1]

LaLanne summed up his philosophy about good nutrition and exercise:

“Living is a pain in the butt. Dying is easy. It’s like an athletic event. You’ve got to train for it. You’ve got to eat right. You’ve got to exercise. Your health account, your bank account, they’re the same thing. The more you put in, the more you can take out. Exercise is king and nutrition is queen: together, you have a kingdom.”[25]

Opinion about food additives and drugs

LaLanne often stressed that chemical food additives and drugs contributed to making people mentally and physically ill due to having too many chemicals and not enough natural foods in their diet. As a result, he writes, many people turn to alcohol and drugs to deal with symptoms of ailments, noting that “a stream of aches and pains seems to encompass us as we get older.”[26]:114 He refers to the human bloodstream as a “River of Life, which is “polluted” by “junk foods” loaded with “preservatives, salt, sugar, and artificial flavorings.”[26]:167
Relying on evidence from The President’s Council on Physical Fitness, he also agrees that “many of our aches and pains come from lack of physical activity.” As an immediate remedy for symptoms such as constipation, insomnia, tiredness, anxiety, shortness of breath, or high blood pressure, LaLanne states that people will resort to various drugs: “We look for crutches such as sleeping pills, pep pills, alcohol, cigarettes, and so on.”[26]

Family and death

LaLanne was married to Elaine Doyle LaLanne for over 50 years and had three children: one from his first marriage (Yvonne LaLanne), one from Elaine’s first marriage (Dan Doyle), and one together (Jon LaLanne). Yvonne is a chiropractor in California; Dan and Jon are involved in the family business, BeFit Enterprises, which they and their mother and sister plan to continue.[3][9][27] Another daughter from Elaine’s first marriage, Janet Doyle, died in 1974 at age 21 in a car accident.[28]
On January 23, 2011, Jack LaLanne died of respiratory failure due to pneumonia at his home in Morro Bay, California.[29][30]

Timeline: LaLanne’s feats

(As reported on Jack LaLanne’s website)

1954 (age 40): swam the entire length (8,981 ft/1.7 mi) of the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, under water, with 140 pounds (64 kg; 10 st) of air tanks and other equipment strapped to his body; a world record.

1955 (age 41): swam from Alcatraz Island to Fisherman’s Wharf in San Francisco while handcuffed. When interviewed afterwards he was quoted as saying that the worst thing about the ordeal was being handcuffed, which significantly reduced his chance to do a jumping jack.

1956 (age 42): set what was claimed as a world record of 1,033 push-ups in 23 minutes on You Asked For It,[31] a television program hosted by Art Baker.

1958 (age 44): maneuvered a paddleboard nonstop from Farallon Islands to the San Francisco shore. The 30-mile (48 km) trip took 9.5 hours.

1959 (age 45): did 1,000 star jumps and 1,000 chin-ups in 1 hour, 22 minutes, to promote The Jack LaLanne Show going nationwide. LaLanne said this was the most difficult of his stunts, but only because the skin on his hands started ripping off during the chin-ups. He felt he couldn’t stop because it would be seen as a public failure.

1974 (age 60): For the second time, he swam from Alcatraz Island to Fisherman’s Wharf. Again, he was handcuffed, but this time he was also shackled and towed a 1,000-pound (450 kg; 71 st) boat.

1975 (age 61): Repeating his performance of 21 years earlier, he again swam the entire length of the Golden Gate Bridge, underwater and handcuffed, but this time he was shackled and towed a 1,000-pound (450 kg; 71 st) boat.

1976 (age 62): To commemorate the “Spirit of ’76”, United States Bicentennial, he swam one mile (1.6 km) in Long Beach Harbor. He was handcuffed and shackled, and he towed 13 boats (representing the 13 original colonies) containing 76 people.[32]

1980 (age 66): towed 10 boats in North Miami, Florida. The boats carried 77 people, and he towed them for over one mile (1.6 km) in less than one hour.

1984 (age 70): handcuffed, shackled, and fighting strong winds and currents, towed 70 rowboats, one with several guests, from the Queen’s Way Bridge in the Long Beach Harbor to the Queen Mary, 1 mile.[34]

Awards and honors

On June 10, 2005, then governor Arnold Schwarzenegger launched the California Governor’s Council on Physical Fitness and Sport. In his address, Schwarzenegger paid special tribute to LaLanne, who he credited with demonstrating the benefits of fitness and a healthy lifestyle for 75 years.[35] In 2008, he inducted LaLanne into the California Hall of Fame and personally gave him an inscribed plaque at a special ceremony.
In 2007, LaLanne was awarded The President’s Council’s Lifetime Achievement Award. The award is given to “individuals whose careers have greatly contributed to the advancement or promotion of physical activity, fitness, or sports nationwide.” Winners are chosen based on the “individual’s career, the estimated number of lives the individual has touched through his or her work, the legacy of the individual’s work, and additional awards or honors received over the course of his or her career.”[36]

Other honors

1963: Founding member of President’s Council on Physical Fitness under President Kennedy[37]

President’s Council of Physical Fitness Silver Anniversary Award

Governor’s Council on Physical Fitness Lifetime Achievement Award

The Horatio Alger Association of Distinguished Americans

American Academy of Achievement

American Cancer Society

American Heart Association

American Medical Association

WBBG Pioneer of Fitness Hall of Fame

APFC Pioneer of Fitness Hall of Fame

Patriarch Society of Chiropractors

NFLA – Healthy American Fitness Award

Received an Award from the Oscar Heidenstam Foundation Hall of Fame

Received National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences Gold Circle Award commemorating over 50 years in the Television Industry

Poppa Neutrino, born William David Pearlman, was a “free spirit” who lived his life outside of expected norms died from heart failure.he was 77. He has been called a modern primitive, a nomad, a permanent dropout, raftbuilder and musician.

(October 15, 1933 – January 23, 2011)

Biography

Inspired by a documentary he saw when he was twelve years old, in which Australian aborigines periodically burnt their homes and walked away naked, free to start a new life, he taught triadic thinking and empowerment to people trapped by the concept of job and rent.[5] Thus Poppa Neutrino built his own homes out of discarded materials on free space (public waterways) and supported himself as a street musician.[6] He changed his name at the age of 52 after surviving a severe illness.[4]
Neutrino has built several rafts out of donated and recycled materials on which he has lived and sailed. In 1997-98 Poppa Neutrino sailed one of his homemade junk rafts, Son of Town Hall, from North America to Europe, becoming the second person to sail a raft across the Atlantic and the first to do so on a raft made from trash. Betsy Terrell, his wife, was the captain and navigator on the crossing.

In 2008 Poppa Neutrino moved to Burlington, Vermont to build another raft, this time on Lake Champlain.[7] In 2010, he started a circumnavigation of the globe, leaving Burlington, Vermont to head first south to Florida with three sailors and their three dogs aboard a new craft, a 37 foot trimaran complete with two outboards, a heated pilot house and four cabins. However, on November 9 their raft was driven onto rocks on Thompson’s Point, Vermont. Papa Neutrino and his fellow rafters were rescued from Lake Champlain.[8] As of December 27, 2010 his raft was still lodged on the rocks, and had been spreading debris across the lake.[9]
Neutrino died on January 23, 2011, in a hospital in New Orleans, Louisiana, of heart failure. [10]
Married “several times” he had four children, as well as step- and adopted children.[4]

Books and films about his life

Poppa Neutrino’s life and travels have been the subject of articles and books, including two by Alec Wilkinson[11][12] and a documentary film.

Louise Raggio was a Texaslawyer for more than fifty years died she was , 91. She was the first female prosecutor in Dallas County, Texas.She spearheaded a coalition to establish the Marital Property Act of 1967, and the Texas Family Code.

Early career

Louise Raggio found a job working as an assistant district attorney in Dallas County in 1954 and was put in charge of child support, delinquent fathers, juvenile court and family law. While working as a prosecutor, she learned that married women had fewer rights in Texas than single women, i.e. married women in Texas had limited property rights and couldn’t take out bank loans or start their own businesses without their husband’s approval.[3] One of her quotes in the KERA Texas TrailerBlazer about her sums up the situation of a woman at the alter in Texas: “When a a man and woman got married, they were one, and he was the one.” Louise Raggio began to fight for the rights of women and became the first female prosecutor in Dallas County, Texas. Joining her husband, Grier Raggio, in 1956 to form the law firm, Raggio & Raggio, she began to work to change the particularly bad laws in Texas concerning women. The Marital Property Act of 1967 became the foundation for the current Texas Family Code. She was nicknamed “The Texas Tornado”.[citation needed]

Marital Property Act

The Marital Property Act of 1967 was Raggio’s best-known accomplishment. The Act helped married women to manage their own property, borrow money from banks in their own right, and establish financial discussions without having to have the presence of her husband. Before this act married women in Texas were subject to the most restrictive laws in the United States.

Quotations

“Every person has the ability to do something the world needs. You do not have to be talented, good looking, or smart. Success means you have found your niche and used your best efforts to try to solve the problems.” -Louise Raggio

(10 March 1928 – 22 January 2011)

Career

Akins was considered lanky, but proved nevertheless to be a powerful hitter with either hand. He began his career as a Lightweight in 1948, continuing to fight in that division for 6 years before finally growing into the Welterweight class. He was long considered to be an effective operator and boasted wins over future World Champions Joe Brown and Wallace ‘Bud’ Smith, as well as ending the incredible forty-seven fight winning streak of Ronnie Delaney, by way of knock-out in 1955.

Akins had powered his way up the rankings in both divisions and finally got his chance of a World title once Carmen Basilio relinquished the Welterweight Championship to concentrate on defending his new Middleweight crown. An elimination tournament including six of the World’s top-rated Welterweights was swiftly established in an effort to find Basilio’s successor. Akins emerged the victor and new World Champion on 6 June 1958 by pounding favourite Vince Martinez to a fourth round destruction. All told, Martinez went down nine times, having never seriously recovered from a shattering right delivered early in the First.

Akins’s reign would not last long however. Six months later, he lost his title to Don Jordan by way of unanimous decision and in only his first defense. Akins disputed the result but fared no better in the return, held the following Spring. From that moment on, it was downhill all the way for the former champion, who would win just ten of his last twenty-three fights before hanging up his gloves in 1962.

Solange Bertrand was a French abstract painter, sculptor, and engraver died she was , 97.

(March 20, 1913 – January 22, 2011)

Early life and education

Born in Montigny-lès-Metz, Bertrand studied art for four years to the École des Beaux-Arts in Nancy, and then attended the Beaux–Arts in Paris. During the Second World War she was registered asa volunteer nurse, and was successively assigned to different posts (army, youth camps, children retreated from bombed areas, repatriation of deportees and prisoners).

Art career

At the beginning of her career, Bertrand painted in an expressionist way, but, later evolved into what can be described as relative abstraction. Bertrand during her long career mixed all manners of painting, jumbling styles and periods and paying only a little attention to dates. In the immediate post war period, she organized exhibitions regularly (Salon d’Automne, Salon de Mai, Comparaison, Salon Women Painters and Sculptors). Her first solo exhibition was organized at the Paris’s Galerie Pascaud in 1947. For the artist many other single person exhibitions followed, mostly in Paris and Metz, but also in the other French departments and abroad (i.e. Belgium, Germany, Netherlands, Italy, etc…).[3] Bertrand gained several honours, including gaining the title of Master Academician in 1985. On May 2005, a sale of 108 of her works achieved success at the Hôtel Drouot
Her work is today in public collections (Museums of Metz, Nancy, Picasso Museum in Antibes, Chéret Museum in Nice, etc…), as well as many private collections. Bertrand died on January 22 of 2011 at the age of 97.

Solange Bertrand foundation

In 2001, Lionel Jospin, then Prime Minister of France, recognized by decree as a public interest the creation of the Solange Bertrand Foundation, preserving and exhibiting artworks of the artist. Bertrand donated to the foundation 303 paintings, 700 drawings, and 49 sculptures, which represent the evolution of her art production throughout her career.[4]

Early years

Park Wan-suh (also Park Wan-seo, Park Wan-so, Park Wansuh, Park Kee-pah and Pak Wan-so, Pak Wanso) was born in 1931 in Gaepung-gun, Gyeonggi-do in what is now North Korea.[2] Park entered Seoul National University, the most prestigious in Korea, but dropped out almost immediately after attending classes due to the outbreak of the Korean War and the death of her brother.[3] During the war, Park was separated from her mother and elder brother by the North Korea army, which moved them to North Korea.[4] She lived in the village of Achui, in Guri, outside Seoul until her death.[5]

Work

Park published her first work, The Naked Tree, in 1970, when she was 40. Her oeuvre quickly grew however and as of 2007 she had written fifteen novels, and 10 short story collections.[6] Her work is “revered” in Korea[7] and she has won many Korean literary awards including, in 1981 the Isang Literary Prize and in 1990 the Korean Literature award.[8] Park’s work centers on families and biting critiques of the middle class.[9] Perhaps the most vivid example of this is in her work The Dreaming Incubator in which a woman is forced to undergo a series of abortions until she can deliver a male child. Her best known works in Korea include ‘Bad Luck in the City’, ‘Swaying Afternoons’, ‘That Year the Winter was Warm’, ‘Are you Still Dreaming?’.[10]
Park’s translated novels include “Who Ate up All the Shinga” which sold some 1.5 million copies in Korean [11] and was well-reviewed in English translation. Park is also published in “The Red Room: Stories of Trauma in Contemporary Korea “
Park died on the morning of January 22, 2011, suffering from cancer.[12]

Bobby Poe also known as The Poe Kat, had a long and varied career in the music business died from a blood clot he was , 77.

(April 13, 1933-January 22, 2011)

He was born in Vinita, Oklahoma. In the mid-1950s he formed Bobby Poe and The Poe Kats, which featured African-American piano player Big Al Downing[2] and lead guitar player Vernon Sandusky. Bobby Poe and The Poe Kats were also Rockabilly Queen Wanda Jackson‘s first Rock and Roll backing band. They toured with Wanda and also can be found on her early Capitol Records recordings, including the Rockabilly classic “Let’s Have A Party“. Bobby, Wanda, Big Al and Vernon are all members of the Rockabilly Hall of Fame.
Bobby Poe and The Poe Kats got the attention of Sam Phillips of Sun Records with their first recorded track, “Rock and Roll Record Girl”. Based on the music of the old standard “Chattanooga Shoe Shine Boy”, “Rock and Roll Record Girl” was at first blocked from release by Wesley Rose of Acuff-Rose because of that fact. By the time all of the legal hurdles were cleared, Sam Phillips was no longer interested in releasing the track. Instead, Dallas, Texas radio personality Jim Lowe stepped in and released the single on his White Rock Records label. “Rock and Roll Record Girl” backed with “Rock and Roll Boogie” became a #1 single in the state of Texas.
After one more single for Jim Lowe’s White Rock Records entitled “Piano Nellie”, under the name of Bobby Brant and The Rhythm Rockers, Bobby Poe gave up his career as an artist to become an artist manager. His first client was Big Al Downing. In the 1960s, Poe moved to the Washington, D.C. area and expanded his operation. He managed and co-produced The Chartbusters, which featured his old bandmate Vernon Sandusky. The Chartbusters scored a Top 40 hit in 1964 with their recording “She’s The One“. Tom Hanks was quoted in People Magazine as saying The Chartbusters were one of the influences for his film “That Thing You Do!”. Poe also co-managed The British Walkers, which featured Bobby Howard and guitarist Roy Buchanan.
In 1968, Poe again switched gears and started several music tip sheets for music industry insiders and radio stations. The most successful tip sheet was Pop Music Survey, which grew significantly when Poe began an annual music convention. After 25 successful conventions, Poe retired in 1996.
After his “official” retirement in 1996, in 1999 he created The Grand Grove Opry in Grove, Oklahoma. This music theater showcased local and national Country music talent and shows were broadcast weekly on KITO radio in Vinita, Oklahoma. After new owners bought the Opry building, Mr. Poe continued to promote Country music concerts until 2005.
In March 2009 Bobby Poe and The Poe Kats were inducted into the Kansas Music Hall of Fame.[3]
Bobby Poe died at his home in Grove, Oklahoma on January 22, 2011. He had been diagnosed with throat cancer in 2009. While he was able to beat the cancer, he grew steadily weaker during his recovery and suffered a fatal blood clot on the aforementioned date.